


Not My Color

by shinesurge



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Late Nights, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 15:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15687933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinesurge/pseuds/shinesurge
Summary: Sleeping can be difficult for commanders, especially if their roommate keeps having stress dreams.





	Not My Color

Something was nudging at Phineas as she slept, clumsy insistent hands pawing at the edges of her abstract visions. Not really considering what she was doing in her dreamy logic she let it in, and immediately she was shaken from her sleep as her heart rate soared to keep up with the foreign panic that flooded her limbs. In her confusion she briefly panicked herself as she fought off the vertigo of suddenly finding herself falling out of the sky. She pinched her arm, mentally reached out and felt Noon humming away under the floorboards, focusing on Noon's steadiness to try and force her body to calm down. Jo had told her about this, how easy it was for commanders to freak out when they woke on a flying machine and felt the planet an entirely unacceptable distance below them. She had brushed it off as an exaggeration, back when actually having her own ship seemed impossibly far away, but after experiencing it she was immensely grateful Jo had thought to warn her. Phineas had quickly begun to acclimate with Lucky Noon's help, but tonight (this morning?) there was something else in the room demanding her attention.

She could feel Ulrich's spirit thrashing like a stuck bird, clutching desperately at her psyche from the darkness to her right. The moon was new, and all she could see in the room was the faint impression of scattered stars through the porthole above Ulrich's bed. Phineas pinched herself a little harder, digging her nails into the skin on the inside of her bicep, trying to pull herself back into her body faster. She'd stopped being _afraid_ of sleep a long time ago, but the moments of dissociation that came with being startled suddenly awake were still unpleasant. She had also long since stopped using _pain_ as a shortcut to remedy this (mostly), but she was needed. Oh well, once in a while wouldn't hurt.

She hoisted herself out of her hammock and fell in a heap when her legs, so numb the pins and needles had stopped, hit the floor and crumpled under her. Ulrich stirred, sighing, but didn't wake. Phineas hissed as blood started to return to her feet, the sensation settling her back into herself right away. At least she wasn't floating anymore. She stood up carefully, whirled her coat-as-blanket around her shoulders and hobbled around the junk on her side of the room to get to Ulrich.

It was one of those times when Phineas was acutely aware that she existed in (at least) two worlds at once, because while part of her was being deafened by the alarm and cacophony Ulrich was projecting psychically, her eyes and ears couldn't find anything wrong with him. Ulrich didn't snore and he usually held still while he slept. She watched him breathe peacefully for a few more minutes, unsure if she should really wake him up over something that might not be a real problem. She whispered his name. She spoke it. She reached out to touch him on the shoulder and he flailed, catching the side of her face clumsily with the side of his hand. He jerked away from her as his eyes flew open, blind and bleary still. Phineas groaned and put a hand to her face.

"Jeez," she griped. Ulrich was breathing hard, covers pulled up tight over his chest while he backed into the corner of his bunk. Half of him was outlined by the weak starlight filtering in, the flyaways in his hair like a messy halo. Phineas grinned in the dark.

"Hi."

Ulrich began to sag down into the mattress.

"Did I hit you? I'm sorry," he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. "are you alright?"

"You killed me." Phineas flexed her feet awkwardly against the floorboards. "I'm uh, I'm fine, are you okay?" she saw the shadows' implication of an annoyed squint on his face.

"Of course I'm okay. What _time_ is it?"

Phineas shrugged. He could see her better than she could see him, the way the light went, which made her feel a little more confident trying to navigate this Weirdness. This was the sort of stuff captains were supposed to be good at. Good captains, anyway. She tried again.

"Were you having bad dreams?" she asked lightly. Ulrich tensed imperceptibly, coughed some sleep from his throat.

"No. Why?"

"I could feel it," she trailed off. Then, "you were uh. Calling me." well. "Not me _specifically_ , just. Anybody. You just wanted help." She pulled her coat around herself. It must be cold outside. Ulrich cleared his throat.

"It is," Ulrich began, then began again. "I didn't mean to disturb you." Phineas smiled and winced as Ulrich seemed to flinch away from it. He did this sometimes, retreated in front of her when Phineas did certain seemingly unremarkable gestures, and she still hadn't figured out what it was that made him so uncomfortable. She had ideas and none of them were nice. All disheveled and curled defensively in the corner of the bed, Phineas wondered if Ulrich looked to her how she did to Jo, the first few days. The first few nightmares about fire and gods.

She rocked back and forth on her feet. Then, before he could protest, climbed up into Ulrich's bunk. Ulrich tensed again as she reached for him, but she only spread the coat-blanket overtop of his quilt, tucking it around his shoulders. She resisted the urge to pat his cheek and maybe kiss it, maybe just a lil smooch on his forehead, then crawled down to the foot of the bunk. Somehow, as she moved, an extra couple feet of bed grew in either direction, and by the time she made it to the other end there was plenty of room for both of them on what had previously been a twin mattress.

"um," Ulrich stated. He didn't move from under the coat.

"It helps." Phineas offered, worming under the covers and being careful not to touch Ulrich's feet with her own, still half convinced he might throw her out. Lucky she'd decided to wear a shirt and boxers to bed tonight. "The coat, I mean. It helps calm you down kinda."

Ulrich sighed deeply and thunked his head back against the headboard.

"I am not sure I can fall asleep again soon. You should go back to bed." Phineas shook her head.

"I won't be able to sleep either, you're real riled up." Ulrich looked frustrated, so she smiled again. "It's okay. Bad dreams suck."

Ulrich coughed.

"Yes."

They sat in sleepy silence for a minute. It wasn't exactly _uncomfortable_ so much as it felt _liminal_. Phineas felt like they ought to do something else.

"Why don't we go downstairs?" she suggested to the dark.

* * *

 A few minutes later they were on the garden deck, sitting at a little table under an enormous umbrella. A misty rain rushed past them, one of dozens of tiny disconnected storm clouds scattered above and below the ship, like an asteroid belt. The rain came and went as they sailed on through the Sprawl. Phineas watched the water drip down from the tree branches and thought the garden could do with some flowering bushes. Her train of thought leapt to sunflowers, and she suddenly ached for Jocasta's front porch.

Ulrich was wearing her coat over his pajamas. He'd pulled his hair back but hadn't bothered to fool with his hearing aid this early, leaving the ragged edge of his left ear pale against the night. Phineas still didn't know what had happened there and the bizarre scar made her burningly curious, but he went to enough trouble to keep it hidden most of the time that she didn't think asking would help much. He was curled up in the other wicker chair with his feet tucked under him. She wondered if the coat was helping.

"Is the coat helping?" she asked. Rain suddenly pelted the canvas above them again and Ulrich grimaced a little bit, pulling his bare feet closer to himself. Then he looked back at her, the dark circles under his eyes way too prominent for Phineas' preference. But he smiled faintly.

"Actually it is."

"I used to sleep real bad." Phineas offered, slouching down and digging her toes into the damp grass. "Right after me and Brokenspectre's whole thing it was really hard to sleep, we sort of couldn't figure out how to fit together for a while."

"Brokenspectre, that spirit with the hole in its chest." It was a question. Phineas nodded.

"Uh-huh. It was bad for a little bit." Phineas leaned back and stared up at nothing. "I was having her dreams, seraph dreams. Her memories of like, colors and... _space."_ She nodded to herself. "Like, space distance. Light years. She was a star, before she got stuck with me. It was trying to parse a whole different existence. It was awful. And we didn't get along then, so she didn't help me any."

"And this was when you were..?"

"Eight," she squirmed a bit. "ish. It's fine now though! We got better at it. Jo used to let me take the coat to bed, she made it herself." Phineas grinned, turned back to Ulrich like a flashlight in his face. "That's why it's so good."

Ulrich pinched the fabric between his fingers. Some kind of stretchy almost-canvas, sturdy but soft with wear. The rain stopped. Truthfully he wasn't sure he liked wearing it, or, he shouldn't like it. Ulrich could feel it rounding out his edges, mentally and physically; muscles in his shoulders he hadn't even realized were taut had relaxed since he put it on. He was _usually_ exhausted, but he was so used to it now he never really noticed. He wondered what it was like to feel this way all the time.

But _that_ made him nervous, too. Vigilance had kept him alive a lot longer than he had any right to be, by anyone's estimate.

He sighed deeply through his nose, then slipped Phineas' coat from around his shoulders. He could already feel his chest beginning to draw tight again.

Phineas watched as he folded the coat and placed it gently on the table between them. She focused on him and his aura blossomed into her vision, blue and silver radiating from his throat in long threads, feeling for things to take in. Or maybe just to hold. The blight in his eye had receded, but now it bled back into his face, distorting outward to the edge of his presence.

"Thanks." he said gently, sliding the bundle closer to her. He smiled. "But it's not really my color, is it?"

Phineas frowned and kicked herself for wasting the opportunity to question him before he walled himself off again. The rain came, and they sat in silence.


End file.
